Warning: This article contains major spoilers for XO, Kitty season 2.

While XO, Kitty had been initially praised for its handling of queer storylines, the Kitty and Yuri plotline in season 2 has sparked significant debate due to its problematic elements. The To All The Boys I’ve Loved Before spin-off is currently trending on Netflix, demonstrating it has a committed audience engrossed in the XO, Kitty’s characters’ individual and varied romantic journeys. Kitty’s slow and nuanced discovery of her bisexuality in season 1, especially, contributed to XO, Kitty’s positive reviews, and was hinted to be a center focus of season 2.

However, the recent execution of Yuri and Kitty’s relationship raises critical questions about representation, storytelling, and how to deliver healthy and inclusive narratives. After XO, Kitty’s season 2 ending, backlash has pointed out the show’s perpetuation of damaging lesbian and bisexual stereotypes that risk neglecting the characters’ sexuality and could echo tropes that have historically been used to invalidate sapphic women. For its wide popularity, and in hopes of a potential XO, Kitty season 3, it becomes necessary that the show works on implementing an approach to its sapphic storylines that is more informed and less reliant on problematic tropes.

8. Stella Outs Kitty To Her Group Of Friends And Yuri

No One Acknowledges How Traumatic That Could Be For Kitty

Aiding to XO, Kitty’s season 2 streaming success, one of the most dramatic episodes has Stella expose Kitty’s love letter to Yuri. As tensions were already high between Kitty, Yuri, and Juliana, the letter successfully takes the conflict to its highest point, resulting in a romantic and friendship breakup. Though the moment rightly acknowledges Juliana’s heartbreak and Praveena’s rage at finding out Kitty and Yuri kissed, XO, Kitty fails to recognize the gravity of Kitty’s experience. Not only are her feelings divulged to Yuri without her consent, but Stella’s letter outs Kitty to people she hadn’t told about her sexuality.

Even if it makes sense that she would be hesitant to continue her bisexual journey after a bad experience, this isn’t addressed (…)

What’s most shocking is that the event is quickly brushed past by everyone, including Kitty. In reality, being outed is a very traumatic thing for queer youths to experience, especially for someone who is just discovering their sexuality. Considering the number of queer characters that are part of the friend group, it makes no sense that none of them cared or advocated for Kitty’s feelings. Especially, the fact that Yuri didn’t check on Kitty even after experiencing her own coming-out struggles is terrible treatment of her character and their friendship.

7. Kitty/Yuri/Min Ho Is Falsely Marketed As A Love Triangle

Other Netflix Shows Have Been Accused Of Queer Baiting Before

Much of XO, Kitty’s allure responds to its romantic entanglements, with the show even calling it a love hexagon. On the one hand, the love triangles make the script feel like an authentic teenage story, acknowledging that romantic feelings can change a lot as people discover who they are. However, the way Kitty and Yuri’s potential romance was quickly thwarted and extinguished, while the show favored the pairing between a girl and a boy, all but canceled the unique love triangle that XO, Kitty had been pushing in its social media efforts.

Plenty of TV shows sadly repeat the mistake of using the love triangle trope to include LGBTQIA+ representation without actually taking time to explore queer themes. Shows like Emily in Paris, Riverdale, and Wednesday are recent examples. Though Kitty and Yuri’s relationship goes further than most sapphic ships, its development feels like a contrived “queer baiting” practice, echoing Netflix’s lesbian representation problem. Instead of Kitty being torn between Min Ho and Yuri’s different qualities and what they bring out in her, XO, Kitty eliminates Yuri before she gets a chance.

6. Stella’s Letter Ends XO, Kitty’s 3 Sapphic Pairings

XO, Kitty Abandons Its Sapphic Ships Too Soon

Even if XO, Kitty season 2 introduces three potential sapphic pairings, none of these survive half the season. This raises concerns regarding XO, Kitty’s commitment to the lesbian and bisexual storylines it proposes. While the strongest sapphic ship is Yuri and Kitty, as this had been set up since season 1 by using parallels to To All The Boys I’ve Loved Before, others emerged as fans got to know new recurring characters. With Kitty wanting to explore her sexuality comes her ship with Praveena, and then, of course, the possibility that Yuri and Juliana’s relationship might be endgame.

If fans found themselves rooting for any of these potential couples, Stella’s letter worked to cancel all three, leaving in its place a halfhearted sapphic representation that remained superficial. XO, Kitty abandoning all its sapphic couples reaffirms the critique that the show appears to bait queer audiences with relatable content but doesn’t take care to develop its storylines with nuance, respect, and acknowledgment of their importance. The one remaining pairing now is Juliana and Praveena, but that wasn’t even developed on-screen — leaving only crumbs sustaining the show’s sapphic ships.

5. Kitty’s Bisexuality Disappears After Her Fall Out With Yuri

By Withholding Kitty’s Internal Process, XO, Kitty Makes It Seem Like Bisexuality Is A Phase

XO, Kitty’s season 2 trailer hinted at a major focus on Kitty exploring her sexuality — with her even wanting to date girls other than Yuri — but this is quickly forgotten after episode 4. While season 1 starts to introduce Kitty’s confusion and explores her internal struggle to figure out how to identify herself, season 2 chooses to focus merely on external exploration, perhaps to the character’s detriment. In the first episodes, Kitty is certain about wanting to go out with Praveena and having her first girl kiss, however, this doesn’t last long enough to feel fully formed.

While the narrative builds up to Yuri and Kitty’s kiss through their romantic tension in both seasons, the event is overshadowed by its negative connotation.

After hurting Juliana and Praveena, and being ghosted by Yuri, who invalidates their kiss, Kitty loses all interest in continuing to have sapphic experiences. Even if it makes sense that she would be hesitant to continue her bisexual journey after a bad experience, this isn’t addressed, with the audience never finding out how Kitty feels regarding pursuing women in the future, or even after being outed. This lack of exploration of Kitty’s internal process in navigating her bisexuality, and the quick moving on to other matters, risks adding to the misconception that homosexuality is “a phase.”

4. Juliana And Yuri’s Relationship Becomes Yuri’s Entire Personality

Yuri Becomes Defined By Her Sexuality And Loses What Made Her Complex

In season 1, Yuri’s relationships with her mother, Dae, Juliana, and Kitty are developed with nuance, fleshing out her character as not solely defined by her sexuality. Even if her main objective is to get Juliana back, Yuri deals with family frictions; being in the public eye; manipulating and then establishing a friendship with Dae; and discovering her mother’s past secrets with Kitty. All of this adds layers of complexity to her character which helps establish her as a person to relate to whether one shares her sexuality or not.

In an ideal scenario, Yuri being a good friend wouldn’t hurt Min Ho and Kitty’s fated romance.

The show spends many episodes building up Yuri’s family conflict, setting her, Jina, and Alex to explore their connections despite Yuri’s father’s refusal. However, in season 2, Yuri’s other relationships or interests are minimized or ruined, focusing only on how things relate to her sexuality. While they were assumed to be necessary to explain many of XO, Kitty’s unanswered mysteries, Yuri’s mother and father are not shown, and, like her half-brother, are only brought up when connected to Yuri’s relationship with Juliana. This, rather than helping the show’s sapphic representation, echoes the idea that being queer defines a person entirely.

3. Yuri Is Sidelined After Being Vilified

The Terrible Lesbian Is Used To Advance Min Ho And Kitty As The Better Couple

While the show had set Yuri to play a part in helping Kitty find out more about her mother’s story, season 2 sidelines her after making her out to be a terrible friend and girlfriend. Her relationship with Kitty becomes that of an impossible crush, and not actually a friend to lean on, as Juliana constantly gets between them, and then Yuri shockingly ghosts Kitty. Though Yuri had previously demonstrated she could be insensitive to other people — like how she manipulates Dae into a fake relationship — it’s hard to believe she would abandon Kitty after everything they experienced together

Yuri’s closer connections to Kitty’s mom through Jina make her the right person to help the XO, Kitty’s Song Covey family feud. Instead, Yuri’s terrible mistakes advance Min Ho as the best romantic possibility, and he takes on the role she fails to fulfill. Tragically, the series uses its lesbian character to further the pairing between a woman and a man. This tradition isn’t new — and plagues harmful narratives exploring queer storylines in a bad light before introducing a positive heterosexual dynamic. In an ideal scenario, Yuri being a good friend wouldn’t hurt Min Ho and Kitty’s fated romance.

2. Kitty And Yuri Cheat On Juliana

Kitty And Yuri’s Kiss Is Framed Negatively, Hurting Its Characters’ Sexuality

While the narrative builds up to Yuri and Kitty’s kiss through their romantic tension in both seasons, the event is overshadowed by its negative connotations. Though the long-awaited scene works as a Kitty and Yuri tease for XO, Kitty’s season 3, the romance ends up being inconsequential after the damage it provokes. Yuri cheats on Juliana and seems to regret it deeply, so she disregards any other meaning the kiss could have for her or Kitty. For her part, Kitty, too, is regretful because of how much it hurts Juliana, Yuri, and herself.

This is a problematic approach to their first kiss because it frames the main sapphic ship as wrong, being that it’s actively hurting everyone involved — inadvertently suggesting it has unstable foundations and shouldn’t continue. Most terribly, it repeats the stereotype that bisexual people are cheaters because they can’t choose one single gender to like. Or even worse, that their curiosity or urge to experiment makes them insensitive to queer peoples’ feelings. Even if it is Yuri who starts the kiss, Kitty goes along with it — accordingly, she takes the narrative blame for it.

1. Yuri Provokes Her Sad Ending

XO, Kitty Emulates The Storytelling Tradition To Punish Queer Characters

In season 2, there is no other XO, Kitty character who makes as many mistakes as Yuri, and she is punished for it. Yuri cheats on her girlfriend and behaves terribly towards Kitty. Accordingly, her chances at love are ruined, and she is to blame for it. Though at first glance this seems to be a typical “a character has to own up to their mistakes” moment, it has larger connotations in the history of LGBTQIA+ representation. Not only is it strange that the single main sapphic character has a tragic ending, but it is, sadly, a storytelling tradition.

Referred to as the “Bury Your Gays” trope, blaming and punishing queer characters for their misfortunes has origins in the first stages of representation efforts. The intent was clear, queer people get sad endings, so avoid being one. Though perhaps this isn’t XO, Kitty’s intention, Yuri being a terrible girlfriend and invalidating her feelings undeniably teaches Kitty that she’s better off not dating women. If there is an XO, Kitty season 3, the show should prioritize a well-informed approach over problematic narrative stereotypes and must better handle the lesbian and bisexual experiences it wants to represent.